Assuming that the competition and world circumstances remain the same, do you think Xbox could realistically have won any of the four generations they took part in, and why/why not?

XB360 days, I recon it could have.
They would have needed to focus less on America and more on rest of the world though.
Even today, xbox is too invested in US focus.... and at this point, it is too little too late.

Marketing (which isn't US focused)
localisation/voice acting in multiple languages
better translations (not just auto done, via google translate) (like the OS has translation errors, and game titles have errors ect)
Higher support outsides the US.

*we and other forums have had threads like this before. I remember seeing screenshots with translation errors in the game titles, in various languages. Amoung other things. I remember people pulling up stats on translations/dubs for various games of the time, and like Playstation games were typically 2-3 times as many languages with subtitles and dubs, as the xbox equivalents. It shows a lack of effort.  


They needed not just match Playstation in these reguards (where they clearly don't)... but exceed them, in these area's.
That is how you take market share, from another competitor. You DO better, and it pays off.

The games where good, but not good enough (clearly, or they wouldn't have sold less hardware overall).

Price is another thing, it is without a doubt, the "easiest" fix/way to win hardware sales.
Xbox could have won, if they were willing to sell XB360 for like 1$.
The thing is, they want to make money too. So they didn't beat Sony when they had a chance.
At this point? I honestly don't think they can.

Like two equal systems, for the same price.
Playstation will sell more off of the brand name itself.
Xbox has to do more, if it wants to win sales, it can't just be "near equal" it needs to be objectively better.

These days Xbox offers less than playstation, and you pay more for it.
(ei. all xbox games are on playstation, while the reverse isn't true.  Not to mention smaller things like the dual sense being ahead)



360 day's they should not have been as cheap on using real translators.
They should have focused more on different regions of the world, instead of just US focus (even down to game developement, and genre's).
They should have opened more places for support around the world. It was/is probably still really lacking compared to their competition.
They could have afforded to waste tons and tons of money, buying marketshare by just vastly underselling sony (ei. sell xbox360 for 1$)

IF they seriously wanted to outsell Playstation and own the gaming market and the future of it, they could have done so.
They just didn't push hard enough.

I think like 2-3 weeks ago, I saw a youtube ad for Gamepass.
I can't remember the last time, I saw a xbox ad, that wanted to sell the physical hardware itself.
(I think for Playstation it was around black friday... I was hit a few times with ads/websites announcements)

360 era only if PS3 never course corrected and Wii was a flop. Matrick didn't take over and RROD didn't happen. 

I didn't even factor in the Wii.... lol.
Yeah beating the Wii in sales would have been abit harder than just beating the PS3.

They could have still done it. However the Wii was a phenomenon at the time, the zeitgeist if you will.
To topple that, they would have likely needed to not have the yellow/red ring of death, and be alot cheaper ontop of everything else too (listed in my post above).

Xbox 360, was very close. Depending on your metrics it may even be called the winner of that generation if not just going by hardware units sold.

But if the question is about hardware unit sales then obviously 360 was their best chance again. It would only need the 360 to have sold around 9% more and the Wii 9% less. It could have easily happened, but it didn't. 

Realistic, only the 8th generation if they didn't screw everything up from the get go.
PS2 and Switch were juggernauts while the novelty of the Wii Remote was too big for the competition to catch up at the time.

Without the RROD they could have easily won that generation. They still won it when it comes to attachment ratio and selling both physical and digital games and introducing indie games to consoles.

The 8th generation they could have won or at least made it harder for Playstation like they did with the PS3.
-Not do the Kinect requirement
-Have the Xbox One launch model be more like the One S
-Remove E3 2013 from existence
-Better quality control from their 1st party developers
-Get more of the niche Japanese games
-Have the OG Xbox and 360 backwards compatibility there day one.
I say this because the PS3 and 360 were extremely close in competition (but the Wii won). The PS4 was a make or break for Playstation due to the huge losses on PS3 and PS Vita so they needed a home run with PS4. If Microsoft handled their 8th generation launch better Playstation wouldn't be the "default" home console of today.
At the end of the day this is all what-ifs. Like if Sega didn't screw up they could still be in the console market, or if Nintendo went with CDs for the N64 Playstation wouldn't have been such a juggernaut in the late 90s and early 2000s.

They did win in the US with the 360. As far as I'm concerned, when you can beat the Wii in that territory, you might as well have won the whole damn thing. Certainly, it's worth a notch on the belt.

Some are saying they could have with Xbox One, and I reckon they might've with a bog-standard affordable console out the get go. But I still see that as less likely.
360 was their best shot. They beat Sony and Nintendo to market by a year, had Juggernauts like Halo 3, Xbox Live, multiplats, third-party exclusives and such. But let's be clear about something, a global victory in units sold would still be close. I see this as a possible end result for the units sold of the three 7th generation consoles.
Xbox 360: 92 million units
Wii: 90 million units
PS3: 80 million units
PS3 may have been the bigger direct threat, but Wii was the bigger threat overall in market share globally.
I don't think it's too crazy of a probable alternate scenario where Wii doesn't catch on 100% the level it did and even has bigger drops at the end of its life.